Welcome to The Happiness Hub!

Do you know, writing your first ever blog post is reeeally hard?! I have been thinking about this project for *such* a long time, and developing more and more ideas for things I want to do here, just in my head… I find now, that getting all of that across to you, in the fraction of a nanosecond before you get bored and click onto another page, quite a challenge!

I guess I should give a big spoiler alert first of all… it has been said that I do ‘go on a bit’. If you can say something in ten words, I will probably use thirty, or more. So if you’re after a one minute read before you whizz off to the next thing in your super hectic life, this is probably not the place for you. Make that 100% definitely, on second thought. Is a word count of ten thousand not a normal blog post length then? Don’t worry, this is only 1,400, probably a short one for me 😀

I say that about you perhaps not being the right ‘fit’ for this blog with nothing but love in my heart, of course. I would just adore it if you could get to know a bit about what we are planning to achieve here; if you can stick with us, it really is going to be the best thing since sliced bread! Or a nice artisan babka, if you’re a lot trendier than I am.

So, what is this happiness hub malarkey? I need to back up a bit here first. My name is Jane, pictured here with Indy and Tom, two of my rescue dogs 🙂 Another spoiler… if you don’t like animals, you will definitely not like our Instagram feed. I have been animal mad for as long as I can remember. Because animals don’t judge you, do they? They care not one bit if you have washed your hair, or have makeup on. All they want is someone to feed them, sit on the sofa with them, and take them for a nice interesting daily walk; although perhaps less so, this part, if you have cats rather than dogs 😀 … I would not advise putting a collar and lead on most cats 😮 or leastways don’t sue me, if you are mad enough to try!

I very much needed the unconditional love of animals, because growing up was a little bit difficult for me, as it is for so many. Having donated an eye to the cancer fairy as a toddler, it is safe to say I felt very different from the rest at school. ‘Cyclops’ was one of my most favourite nicknames… ummm, I can say that now with a wry smile, but at the time it was… a little less fun.

To move things along, we’ll skip the next three decades. Fast forward to today, where I am fortunate enough to be in Northern California, staying with my good friends Cindy and Jerry Clark. Here I am on their deck, with the most stunning view over Folsom Lake… bit windswept 😀

So this morning, I am a new woman! Every single thing I am wearing is brand new, from my knockout Victoria’s Secret bra that Cindy made me buy, because my old one was “doing absolutely nothing for your girls” 😀 to my silky new knickers, which were a bit pricey (but I’m worth it, don’t you know?), to my glittery fishnets, to my sparkly heeled over the knee boots, also found by the amazing Cindy. I feel like a million dollars, although thankfully with the amazing prices in America, I didn’t cost anywhere near that.

I am also a new woman in my head, which is where it matters much more. For far too long, I have put off actually getting up this first blog post, because all the old ‘I’m not enough’ voices (you know the ones… I’m not good enough, clever enough, interesting enough, emotionally stable enough, etc etc etc) were doing an awesome job of drowning out my much more accurate ‘you are a freaking magical unicorn girlfriend’ inner wisdom!

Today though, I have decided to squish that annoying git of a gremlin on my shoulder, and just 54321 get on and do it already. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out the Ted Talk by an amazing lady called Mel Robbins. She is the reason you’re reading this now, so if you have any issue with what I’m writing, take it up with her, not me 😉

I need to get this inaugural post up right now in order to meet the deadline of my last live training in the course I’ve been taking. Some of you reading this will have been on the above-mentioned Mel Robbins’ ‘Power Of You’ course with me, and understand how emotional it is, to come to the end of such a life-changing experience. The course blurb said that we would not be the same people at the end, and it did not lie.

Many of the fellow serial ‘personal development’ junkies who took this course with me will agree, that somehow this gorgeous blond bombshell dynamo, with her authentic and at times painfully honest F-bomb dropping style, has reached parts other self help gurus just haven’t got anywhere close to. I still don’t really understand how, but I know it’s true.

My wonderful mum could certainly be forgiven for her reaction when I told her I was doing a personal development course… “errrr if you aren’t developed by now, isn’t it a bit late?”… at my grand old age of 45! Bless her heart…

Whilst yes, I may have more ‘how to achieve x’ books at home than the British Library, the answer to that question is always an unequivocal NO, whatever age or stage of your life you’re at. I spoke to people in their seventies on the course, and I’m not even sure they were the oldest. You never ‘finish developing’.

Every day is a new chance to start over. Your past is not your future. You always have the option to change your story, whatever your current circumstances are, and to start living the life you were meant for. However crazy it may seem to you right now. You just need to take some kind of positive action, and inch by inch you will get there. As long as you don’t quit, that is. I have come close a few times, but I’m so glad I stuck with it, as I really believe this website can help put a smile on an awful lot of people’s faces, and not just in a superficial ‘oh that’s a funny post on [insert your choice of social media here]’.

I cannot tell you how much of an emotional rollercoaster these last two months have been for me. Mariana Trench depths (yes I did have to Google that) have been followed by Mount Everest highs, repeatedly. It has been mentally exhausting, to put it very mildly. I haven’t achieved everything I wanted to, but my stated goal was to get this website up in some form, and I am doing that, so I finish the course with a proud smile 🙂

I know with absolute concrete certainty that I will want to re-write this post tomorrow, because nothing is ever good enough for me, and I am an Olympic gold medal winning tinkerer. I will have to ask Rich to do something geeky so I can’t do that. Wow it’s going to be very interesting for me, putting blog posts out there and not letting myself edit them to death!

Amongst other things, this course has been about getting out of your comfort zone. As well as Mel and her equally wondrous ass-kicking partner Mandy Burgan, and her gorgeous hubby Chris, there are a whole squadron of people I wish to thank for their unwavering support. I will endeavour to do just that in the posts to come. I really hope you decide to follow our progress, because I will definitely need help from a lot of you, to achieve our goal.

So to finish, congratulations at getting to the end of my long post, and THANK YOU if you made it this far, you are definitely someone we are going to love at the Happiness Hub, and a potential spreader of smiles everywhere you go. Can’t wait to get to know you 🙂